


Do Not Go Gentle

by asuralucier



Category: The Godfather (1972 1974 1990)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, But maybe shipfic?, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Hallucinations, Infidelity, M/M, Nonlinear Narrative, Probably Inaccurate Mafia Lingo, Some bits of book canon, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 08:50:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16385003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: “He gonna be your brother too,” said Sonny clapping his hand around the shoulders of some skinny Irish angry kid.Michael didn’t know if he was ever going to be alone again.(Set afterThe Godfather, Part IIafter Fredo’s death with some scenes fromThe Godfather, Part Iand pre-canon gleaned from the book.)





	Do Not Go Gentle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saturni_stellis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturni_stellis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Many thanks to @londonbridge for the beta.

“He gonna be your brother too,” said Sonny clapping his hand around the shoulders of some skinny Irish angry kid. And he was _angry_ in a way that was unfamiliar to Michael, who was only almost five and regarded anger kind of as a far away thing that sometimes followed his father home. The anger would always sit at the door and wait for his father the Don to pick it up and shoulder the next morning. The Don actually wore anger very well, the whole emotion would seep and immerse itself deep in his muscle and bones, entwining with the lactic acid in his body during a brisk (angry) walk. The Don wore anger so well that it never reached his face. 

The skinny Irish kid thrummed with anger. The feeling was trying to settle in his bones, Michael thought, but maybe there wasn’t enough of the kid to go around just yet. The kid wasn’t big and bullheaded like his real brother Sonny, but he was wiry and stood just as tall. 

“Why does he got to sleep in my room?” Michael protested. “Your room is bigger than mine.” 

“I’m happy on the couch, thanks,” said the skinny Irish kid as if he was wary of stirring up brotherly strife like some kind of real brother. 

“Nonsense,” their mother said. “Mikey’s room has a mattress. You sleep there, Tom.” 

“But what’s wrong with his eye?” Michael trained his gaze on Tom’s right eye, which was bulging out of his head. Some stuff was leaking out of it too, but Tom was standing there like his eye was all normal.

“We’re taking you to the doctor’s first thing,” his mother said to Tom. “Now off you go. Michael, shoo.” She made a broomlike sweep with her hands and Michael went unhappily with Tom in tow to his bedroom which was not too far away from the kitchen. 

 

Michael couldn’t sleep. His hand shook something awful, and it was the kind of shake that downing a hard stiff drink couldn’t even fix. He was alone enough in his bedroom, with Tom there too, lying next to Michael’s bed on the floor. For the fourth night in a row, Tom had telephoned his wife Theresa and told her he was working late. But what he was really doing was lying on the floor of Michael’s bedroom with his hands steepled together, like he was praying. 

“I think I’m sick, Tom,” Michael said. “First I was sick in my head and now it’s gone everywhere else, you know what I mean? It kind of hurts the back of my skull when I take a piss, and then it travels and fills up my lungs and clouds up my eyes and.” 

The lawyer in Tom told him that he didn’t need to say anything. But as Michael’s brother there was plenty to say. But maybe Michael’s mind couldn’t stand for any of those platitudes at this moment, or ever. Michael was clever and quick, so platitudes were insulting. “...You had to do something, Mike. That sort of thing required a response and you responded. You didn’t do anything -- wrong.” He could have done without the last bit, Tom thought, that last bit was soft and a platitude, but it was his fourth night on the floor and his spine chose that moment to remind him that he wasn’t a young man anymore. 

Michael laughed, “Thanks, Tom. That’s what he said, too.” 

“Who?” 

“Fredo,” Michael said. “He visits me when you’re asleep.” 

Tom shifted on the floor, on his stomach, which resulted in an uncomfortable stab near his kidney. He gave up and sat up, leaning against the side of Michael’s bed. 

“You think I’m crazy,” Michael said. “You think that I should take some time off to grieve or mourn while you take care of the family business. You know I trust you enough to do that.” 

“...I’m not gonna say you’re crazy, Mike.” 

“Do you see him too?” 

Tom sighed, “No.” 

“Because you didn’t order to have him killed and I didn’t even having the fucking guts to do it myself. To look him in the eye and go, you fucking _betrayed_ the family, Fredo. You did! You didn’t even just do it to me which I could almost live with! You did it to my _family_ and your _family_ you fucking sonofabitch.” 

 

A sound woke Michael up. It was a strange little whinny, the kind of sound that a horse might make. The sound came from the far side of the room, where Tom had dragged the mattress so that it sat right by the door and blocked any light that would have otherwise seeped in from the hallway. 

“...Tom?” 

“I’m asleep,” came the reply. 

 

Tom Hagen graduated from New York University Law School and came home in a new suit. He came home with a big vocabulary too, and flounced around a lot of words in Latin, but not in a braggadocious way. That was one of the words he’d used privately with Michael, who was working on his college admissions essay for Dartmouth. Michael was stuck going between politics or law, like Tom. 

“You wouldn’t like law, Mike,” said Tom. 

“Why not?” 

“It’s a bit bullshit, don’t you hate bullshit?” 

“ _You’re_ a lawyer,” said Michael, chewing on the tip of his pen.

“I don’t like bullshit,” Tom assented. “But I like money more. You know what the Don said to me? That a lawyer could take more money than a group of goons with guns could from a bank.” 

The monikers “The Don” along with “The Godfather” had recently formed real meaning for Michael, not just that little-boy meanings that had once followed him throughout his childhood that his father cared about his family enough to leave anger at the door. Strange men came to see his father all the time. Sometimes women did, too. An unexpected line had formed at Sonny’s wedding and his mother had said something about good Sicilian manners. 

“I think politics is even more bullshit,” Michael said. “Tell me I’m wrong.” 

Michael, Tom thought, was not like his brothers. Sonny had grown big, masculine and the talk around town was that Sonny's wife was afraid to go to bed with him because then it meant she’d be plowed by a big dick and would have to take days to recover afterwards. Fredo was opposite of that, soft-spoken and small-headed. He’d even started to go bald, even though he had little to worry about. 

“Politics is a big part of what your father does,” Tom said. “Politics could do a lot for you, Mike, you can own a nice big house in Washington. Go to fancy dinners, politics gets all the girls, too.” 

“And law doesn’t?” 

Tom shrugged, “It could have. It does.” 

Michael studied Tom anew in his new suit. The man even wore cufflinks -- of the American flag -- he saw, once he peered closer. Tom was a handsome man, in the generous warm-blooded German-Irish way and not in the hot-blooded wanting Italian way. He spoke more than passable Sicilian now, in fact if Michael really cared to think about it, Tom’s Sicilian was better than his and he ought to have been ashamed.

“What makes politics different from that?” Michael asked. There was another underlying tone to his voice now, one that was putting forward another question, and not one about politics. “I’d study. Just as much as you.” 

Tom lit a cigarette with a match. The match made an especially satisfying hissing sound when it struck the sand strip.

“Nah, Mike. You’d be better at all the schmoozing stuff. You’ve got the Sicilian hospitality in your blood and you’re even pretty like your ma. Washington won’t even know what hit it.” 

“That a compliment?” 

“Yes, why not.” Tom said without really thinking it through. Michael leaned forward to nab the cigarette from Tom’s mouth and Tom caught him by the chin; too easily, and Tom told himself that in this moment, that Michael had maybe made himself wanting and complicit but not yet culpable and Tom didn't want to ruin the game just yet. He let Michael have the cigarette and distanced himself, “Is this what you’re like when someone pays you a compliment? You’re suddenly all starving and the like.” 

“I’m not like anything,” Michael said, sighing happily as he felt the nicotine fill up his lungs. The filter of the cigarette was a little wet from Tom's spit, “Maybe I just wanted a smoke.” He’d fooled around with a few girls before of course. Mostly the sort of good girls that squeaked and delighted at how Polite Michael was and although he was being Polite, he could also be Bad all in the same breath. It got a little boring, like a little carnival ride that looked exciting when you stood on line for it, but it wasn't so fun now because he could always get a seat. Michael didn’t think he was starving for anything, but maybe he was. 

 

“For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing,” said Fredo’s severed blown up head to Michael. He sounded like Tom. “I did a thing that was not so good for the family, no? You had to respond, Mikey. I’m your brother, you know, but I’d never really felt like it, one of yous.” 

“You are one of us, Fredo. You just made a mistake. A pretty damn bad one, but you know what? I made a pretty bad mistake myself. I should have shot your head clean off myself. Neri did a bit of a shoddy job, didn’t he? Didn’t look you in the face. Didn’t give you a chance to come clean about it. Not just whine to me like some little bitch that I didn’t trust you.” Michael reached for the empty tumbler beside his bed. It was still empty. He weighed it in his hand. “I fucking did trust you, Fredo. All the other stuff, you didn’t fucking have to take it personal.” 

Fredo smiled at him, or tried to, and Michael felt bile rise from the back of his throat. “It’s the family, Mike. Always personal. Does Tom always sleep on the floor?” 

The head floated to the side of the bed, where Tom Hagen sat half propped up and asleep. Even in his sleep he wore a frown and there was a deep furrow between his eyebrows. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Imagining a hole through his head,” said Fredo. “A pew! And a bang! Say, do you think an Irish brain would be ice cold if it spills out of his head? When Neri shot me I felt very warm. Like I was on a beach ‘stead of fishing out in the cold. I thought to myself, isn’t this nice? I could go order a piña colada even though that’s a girly drink.” 

“Get away from him, Fredo.” Michael said, “Get away.” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Fredo. “I’m not here.” 

 

While Sonny was with Lucy, Connie’s matron of honor, seeing to her with his big dangerous dick, Michael was sat on the desk of Tom’s office. Tom was kneeling in front of him, undoing his belt buckle and very neatly taking out Michael’s erection, as if he was mindful that there was an order to things, that this was against the rules, but this was a wedding and there was something about polite, Sicilian manners on the day of a wedding. 

Michael closed his eyes as Tom put him in his mouth, subjecting him to long luxurious sucks that were at the same time generous and giving and in the sweet spirit of matrimony. 

“What’s your girlfriend’s name?” Tom said.

“Oh, God. Are we doing this now? Jesus Christ. Okay.” 

They were doing this now, because there was something about Michael’s tailored military uniform that was almost as inviting as Tom’s first bespoke suit. That was a word, bespoke, to be made especially for somebody. But Tom already knew the name of the girlfriend. He’d even had some boys travel up to Hanover, New Hampshire to take pictures of Michael and God forbid Kay Adams, whose family was a fine (which was say a good, morally upstanding Christian) family from the small town of Enfield nearby, but the Adamses didn’t want to be Irish or German-Irish or nothing. They’d just wanted to be _tabula rasa_ American. Mr. Adams, her father, was a pastor of a local Baptist church. Kay Adams didn’t particularly enjoy the sameness of pasta but she enjoyed eating a hamburger with her hands and didn’t always wipe her mouth after every bite. She had a shapely, girly mouth and nice straight American teeth. 

“Her name,” Michael said, wishing Tom would put his mouth to better use rather than just forming words. Then Michael twisted his mouth in almost a teasing way, “Is Kay Adams. Kind of like Tom Hagen, now that I think about it.” 

“Shut up,” Tom said and his hand worked along the pulse of Michael’s dick. Then he put his mouth back on Michael again because he didn’t really want the kid to be talking anymore. Michael didn’t talk, but he sighed and grunted, and he grabbed a fistful of Tom’s hair and ejaculated into Tom’s mouth. Tom's nose filled with the scent of musk and his mouth filled with a salty taste. 

After, Michael leaned in and kissed Tom with the sticky sheen still in his mouth. Tom let Michael push him against the door jamb, driving the door handle into the small of his back, to the detriment of his expensive suit. The strangeness of this situation was then quickly outweighed by other facts of more probative value. Michael was a man of mostly hidden strength; he wasn’t a showoff, wasn’t a braggadocio. He liked gripping Tom tight in his fist and Tom in turn had a tight hold on the back of Michael’s neck.

With his free hand, Michael tugged at Tom’s nice trousers with intent. He wanted the trousers to become not so nice, just a little bit as the Italian wool bunched around Tom’s knees. 

“Look at me,” Michael said, in a voice that might have been the Don’s. The authority and the surety of his timbre was unmistakable, passed down from father to son. “There’s just me, Tom.” 

Tom lifted his head from Michael’s shoulder and looked. “I’m looking. I look at you all the time.” 

“You look at me with Kay,” Michael said. “Don’t you?” 

“Sure I do,” said Tom rather agreeably. He found it hard to be anything else in his current circumstances. “She’s a good girl, your Kay Adams. Probably keeps your dick all to herself.” 

“Yeah, she kind of does. She’s not like Sonny’s girls. I pick ’em right.” 

“You do,” Tom said as he spilled all over Michael’s hand with a heady sigh. “You do, you do, you do.” 

 

“I said I was asleep,” Tom’s eyes were wide open and glittering in the dark. 

“People only talk when they’re awake.” Michael said, summoning all the know-how of a five-year-old. “Because or else you’re crazy.” 

“I am not crazy,” said Tom. 

“I know you’re not,” said Michael. “Which is why you must be awake. Where are your parents, anyway?” 

“Dead. Probably.” 

“My parents are alive,” said Michael, making himself comfortable on the mattress, he stared at Tom’s spine, visible against his white vest. “So it’s all fine now.”

 

Tom woke with a start, as a glass tumbler smashed what seemed like inches from his head. Upon coming to, he had to take a minute and come to the realization that he was on the floor of Michael’s bedroom. There was a crick in his neck and Michael was breathing so loudly he was practically wheezing like a pig.

“Shit. I’m sorry, Tom.” 

“Don’t be,” Tom said gamely. “You missed. That’s the more important thing, I think.” 

“I had to do something,” said Michael. “He was going to hurt you.” 

“Fredo?” Tom would have asked who it was, but why bother asking a question to which he already knew the answer? He disliked wasting time, almost as much as he disliked bullshit. “What was he going to do?” 

“Shoot your head off. Bang. Pew.” 

Tom raised himself up off the floor with sleep still calling to his body and sat down on the bed. He reached for Michael’s hand and found it ice cold. He squeezed it once and let go. Michael shifted over to make room and before Tom thought too much about it, he climbed into Michael’s bed under the covers. Between the mattress and the covers there wasn’t an iota of warmth. It was like all of the Sicilian warmth had gone out of Michael’s body what with this one act of perfectly justified fratricide. Tom felt like saying something stupid laced with legalese, in a bid to make Michael laugh. Something like: _Your honor, I speak for the defense when I say that his reason was good and sound._ lt'd been some time since Tom had stepped into a courtroom.

“Fredo was never a great shot,” Tom said. “I probably could have dodged.” 

“Jesus.” 

“You really got to get some sleep, Michael. I can’t keep doing this you, you know. I need to go back home to Theresa. And everything aside, you are going to drive Connie crazy, cause of this.” 

Michael made a non-committal sound about Tom’s very real need to be elsewhere. Tom knew Michael liked Theresa but only because Theresa was a good girl, happy and stubborn, except when she sobbed sometimes, like that one time when she'd been certain that Tom was dead. She was also a good mother to Tom's children. Theresa was a lot like Kay Adams had been but Kay Adams, with bits of Corleone stuck to her, wasn’t quite like that anymore. Worse than being her husband’s name, Corleone was even a place, a village in the middle of the old country that probably had its wily ways of twisting around in the skin of a new country woman. Tom wondered if Michael ever missed the old Kay Adams. Likely, Michael did, which made it all the more reason for Tom not to ask. 

“Connie doesn’t understand this,” Michael said. “She’d always felt sorry for Fredo, the way we all did but because she was his sister she told him. She hates me.”

Tom weighed his words before letting them loose, “She knows what Fredo did, too. And how unforgiving it was. You did forgive him, didn’t you? And that wasn’t what I said.” It wasn't the first time Connie had to forgive Michael, either, but the whole mess with Sonny and Carlo was a long time ago. It made little sense to bring it up now.

“Sure it wasn’t what you _said_ ,” Michael turned on his side to face Tom. “But I’m clever enough to pick up the implications of what you’re saying, counselor. You’re saying that it’s all in my head, like you’re some shrink.” 

Tom glanced at Michael, “Psychology is even more bullshit. If they had their way everybody would have a screw loose.” 

That made Michael laugh. 

“My parents are still in my head too,” Tom admitted. “I think the Don cursed me. When he said I should never forget them. One of those old Sicilian curses that rears its ugly head when you think you’re finally rid of it.” 

“And how do you sleep?”

“Not fitfully.”

Michael’s breath was warm and close next to Tom’s neck. “You should go back to Theresa tomorrow,” he said, as if picking up himself from somewhere; that was what Tom always liked most about the man, he always had strength to draw from as if he was drawing from a well. “But you don’t have to go right now.”

Tom closed his eyes and settled in, “Sure. I don’t have to go right now.”


End file.
